You know it’s funny, how sometimes our lives seem to go in circles.

Except sometimes, the circles are really spirals, they bring us to a higher level of whatever it is.

This is something that came out very powerfully for me tonight as I thought about an idea that I’d been fantasizing about for many years, except this time I wasn’t just thinking about it as a dream, but rather as a goal. A gigantic, hairy, audacious goal, but a goal nonetheless. About a week ago in the first session of the Cash and Joy Provocateurs, Catherine Caine asked me to do just that. She asked each of us in the group to share our Big Harry Audacious Goal. It wasn’t something I had thought much about, but after just a moment I realized that there is one thing that kept coming up in different ways almost for as long as I can remember, and I knew that this was my BHAG.

I want to share it with you, but I also need to understand that while this goal is tremendous at the moment it’s very much what Havi calls “a tiny, sweet thing.” So it needs to be handled with care, and that’s what I’m doing here.

So what is this thing?

It’s an event, actually a series of events, each one with over 10,000 people in attendance. A sort of rally of transformation, alchemy, wonder, spirit and outright magic.

I can feel how my whole life is leading to this point, for me to be standing on the stage telling stories, weaving processes of spiritual alchemy, as we gently but powerfully allow the shifts within each of us to take the next steps becoming even more ourselves.

This isn’t just a speech, or a workshop. It’s a fully immersive experience. We use lighting, projections, sound and other tools of the theater to create an environment which envelops everyone who attends, and completely surrounds them. This environment can change and morph from one moment to the next as the stories and dreams unfold.

I could go on and on, I think I have shared what wants to be shared at the moment about this.

Let me answer some questions that you might be thinking before I go:

When will this happen?

I don’t know, it will happen when it’s ready, and I’m ready.

Where will it be? How much will it cost? Where do I sign up?

I’m thrilled that you’re interested, but I don’t really know that either.

Don’t you realize that this will never work? That events like this are too expensive, too hard, crazy, or whatever?

I truly appreciate your concern, and I’m not trying to do this next week. I know that there’s a lot to it, and that there are probably lots of places where things can go wrong (there are in every endeavor, large or small.) But please understand that the biggest mistake I could make is to not do this, it is the calling of my heart.

Can I help?

Maybe? Probably? I’m not in a place yet to look for partners, or people to help, or even know what kind of help I would be looking for. However, that will change, when the time comes, so watch this space. If you like, leave a note in the comments about your interest, and I’ll keep you in mind.

Today I want to be very specific about what kind of comments I’m looking for. As I said, this is a tiny, sweet thing, which needs to be protected and cared for as it grows and solidifies. I would love your support, and if reading this sparks something super exciting in you, I’d love to hear about that too. If you think I’m nuts, you’re probably right, but please, keep it to yourself for the moment. I’m not looking for advice, criticism, or even really suggestions, I most love to hear how this resonates with you, in your heart, if there’s something you truly feel moved to share.

Thank you for letting me share my Big Hairy Audacious Goal with you. Don’t be surprised if I don’t talk about this much for a while, then again don’t be surprised if I do. I’m just excited to see how my tiny, sweet thing grows.

I had a major realization today. I realized that since I was a small child, all I’ve wanted to be is an adult. I had very little interest in most of the things that “children” did: sports, playing with other children my age and so forth. I always felt like I related better to the adults around me than to those who were supposed to be my peers. I never really felt they were my peers. As a second grader, I didn’t want to learn soccer, I learned computer programming.

photo credit: young_einstein

Some aspects of this have been a wonderful gift to me throughout my life, I’ve developed my technical and creative skills, and had the opportunity to do some really wonderful things at a remarkably young age.

But this is all familiar territory for me, today was something new.

Today I realized that maybe being a “responsible adult” was not really what I wanted. It had never occurred to me to consider any other possibility, and even as I write these words my monsters (to use Havi’s term) are going crazy yelling at me: “how could you want to be anything but a responsible adult, what else is there that it would be reasonable to be?”

Today I unpacked the meaning of the words “responsible adult” to me.

I came to understand something really powerful in the process of doing this. I realized that in my mind “responsible adult” was nothing more than societal programming, the set of rules that I absorbed unconsciously from the time I was a tiny baby I’m watching the people around me and drawing conclusions about the rules that they operated by based on what I saw. One of the things that’s interesting to note, is that at the time that I was receiving this programming unknowingly I was not in a position to really understand or analyze what was happening. My two or three or four-year-old brain didn’t understand why people were doing what they did, and some of the conclusions it came to are really not useful to me.

For instance:

Urgency should be the key driver of my decision-making. If the phone rings, it needs to be answered immediately. If an e-mail comes in, it needs to be responded to immediately. If someone needs something from me it’s my responsibility to deliver it instantaneously regardless of what else is going on. This is not useful, at least not to me.

Another example:

The only way to be even remotely okay is to be perfect. Less-than-perfect is completely unacceptable. Once again, this is something which is so limiting since perfection, in the sense I’m referring to it here, is not something that I can ever reasonably expect to reach.

Here’s one that really hit home:

When I’m not able to do something easily and naturally, it means that I’m bad, I’m not good enough. Not only should I be doing things easily and naturally, I should be doing them in a way which is unique, but not too different from how other people do them, because that’s not okay either.

All of a sudden I started to understand why I felt painted into a corner so much of the time.

So what now?

Think the most important thing is to recognize that these things which have been part of my worldview till now don’t have to stay a part of my worldview. I find it hard to put into words, but just identifying and articulating is already changing them even as I write this post.

I’ve also become aware, that it would be helpful to encourage myself to be willing to do things in a more childlike way, at least some of the time. This is something I’ve known before, even something I’ve taught when I’ve worked with other people, but I’ve never really given myself permission to do it myself.

Wow, that feels really big. I can’t wait to see where it takes me!

Come play with me?

This is big stuff, when we talk about programming, and change work, and particularly our own internal process, it often brings up things both for ourselves and other people. If my processing my stuff has triggered you in a way that’s uncomfortable, I’m truly sorry and that is not my intention. This is also not advice, sometimes I do give advice here–talking about how to integrate storytelling into life and business, or maybe about how to make technical things work better, for example–but this is not advice. This is nothing more, and nothing less than me sharing my process.

I would love to hear your responses, or any parts of your process you want to share that were sparked by this in the comments below. So come play with me.

Letting Go and Letting God

“But wait, there’s more!”

Then, all of a sudden, I felt very strongly that receiving from the divine is, in fact, a form of recognition, of worship.

And that realization changed everything.

I had a giant epiphany this week. It was one of those I–can’t–believe–that–I–didn’t–realize–this–sooner moments. It was one of those moments where in an instant, everything I thought I knew about something got turned upside down.

You may or may not know about Binaural Journeys, where I create meditation audios that use a cool combination of sound technologies and my voice to help people relax very deeply, and make changes that they want to make in themselves.

The Setup

I really created Binaural Journeys out of the inspiration for a particular meditation. Then I went looking to figure out how to let my Thing out into the world. What I found was a very traditional style of Internet marketing, taught by a wonderful person who was really helpful. So I got my Things online, and started sharing it with the world. Some people bought it, and those that did have almost universally loved it, but something wasn’t right and it took me a long time to learn what. That was the epiphany.

I finally realized that I wasn’t presenting my Thing in a way that would appeal to my Right People. I realize, that my Right People were the kind of people who are like me in a lot of ways, and that one of those ways is that they have a tendency to not like things that feel like traditional Internet marketing–“squeeze pages,” sales pages written like direct mail sales letters, and so forth.

More importantly, I realized that I really don’t like those things.

I realized, that the way I was presenting this online was not congruent with Me. And I also realized that was a big problem. I realized that that was part of why some people I know didn’t react to my offerings away that I had hoped it would.

Most importantly, I realized that this was the thing that didn’t feel right to me.

So I’m starting over, doing things in a whole new way. It’s a little bit scary, because it’s different, but I’m different to; and I’m convinced that this is what I need to do.

So there are changes coming.

I also realized that in addition to changing how I present Binaural Journeys, there was something else I needed to do. That is, to be more myself here. In addition to the artist me, the storyteller me, the technician me, and the other parts of my life that you’ve met, here I also have a side of me which I’ve been reluctant to share: the Mystic, the one to whom spirituality and connection are so important. So I realized that that’s part of what I need to share as well, and that I need to accept that that’s something some people may not be comfortable with, but it’s part of who I am, and so if this site is going to continue to have my name in the url, I need to make that a part of what I share as well.

Has this ever happened to you?

If you’ve had an experience like this I’d love to hear about it in the comments!  As you comment, please keep in mind however that this is my realization and my process, and I’m not looking for advice about it.  Though I would love to hear just about anything esle you have to say

Fair warning:

This post is going to be a little bit weird–maybe a lot weird–depending on your perspective. I promise, that this really is useful to me, which is why I’m sharing it. Of course, it may, or may not be useful to you. Please take whatever you find useful and leave the rest.

Monsters???

Here’s the idea:

The most important thing about monsters

Here’s the key

Approaching my monsters

Thanking Your Monsters

Daniel Pink just posted on his blog about something that got me thinking. Emotionally intelligent signage . . . in an airport? | Daniel Pink.

In short, the folks at Milwaukee’s General Mitchel International Airport created an area, just past security for folks to get their shoes back on and themselves back together, and labeled it the “Recombobulation Area.”

I just wonder, how many of us could benefit by creating “recombobulation areas” in our lives.  Be they physical spaces to decompress when coming home, or coming in to our offices or whatever, or temporal spaces.

Recognizing that we are discombobulated, and taking the time to take care of ourselves in whatever way we need to get back in harmony with ourselves.  I suspect that if this is done mindfully, the time gained in increased productivity and gain in comfort would FAR outweigh way the time it take to do the recombobulating.

So if you need a walk, go for a walk.  If you need a cup of tea, stop and make a cup of tea, and take the time to really enjoy it!

Tune in to whatever it is you really need, and find ways to give it to yourself.

I really believe that it will make all the difference.

So what’s your “recombobulation area?”  Please share in the comments!

I have been a huge fan of Daniel Pink’s writing since I read his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. In this book, Dan makes a powerful argument that virtually all left brain, sequential tasks are either being automated or outsourced. He goes on to suggest that what is needed is the incredibly powerful combination of creative, right brain thinking, supported by sequential, left brain thinking. If you haven’t read this book, I strongly encourage it. But what I really want to talk about in this post is Daniel pink’s new book: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

It's time to recognize a new type of motivation that actually is motivating.

This book blew my mind, it made my eyes roll back in my head and blink “tilt,” and smoke come pouring out of my ears. Well, not literally, but it kind of felt like that, only in a good way.

Like so many people in our modern society, I was brought up to believe that people are basically motivated by two primary things, reward and punishment. I can remember many times, being frustrated at not being able to get myself to do something which I felt I “should.” I often thought to myself “well I guess not doing this doesn’t hurt badly enough, when it does, I’ll do it.” Dan refers to this as “Motivation 2.0″ and described it as a motivational system of the industrial age. He argues that what we need in the modern world is “Motivation 3.0″ which is intrinsic in nature. He describes this new type of motivation as having three primary aspects: autonomy, mastery and purpose.

He lays out an incredibly solid case of research which has been known over the last 50 years, demonstrating that the industrial age extrinsic motivation concepts are truly problematic and in many cases end up REDUCING motivation rather than increasing it. This fits very well with my own experience.

He gives many powerful examples and suggestions for how to implement Motivation 3.0 in our lives, workplaces, and schools. I’m still processing how to apply this most effectively in my own life. But this is powerful stuff, and I would strongly suggest you read this book — whoever you are, whatever you do, this is something that you need to know, really know, deep in your bones, in order to be truly happy and successful.

Note: the Amazon.com links in this post are affiliate links, and I get a tiny commission if you purchase through them.

It’s amazing for me to think that just over a month ago, November 24, 2009 to be specific, I first started posting regularly on this blog. It feels like forever ago.

I consider myself a pretty technically hip guy, I’ve used all sorts of computers essentially my whole life, from the Apple IIs to early versions of DOS (I first worked on DOS version 1.1) to the many iterations of the MacOS and the endless saga of Windows, not to mention occasional forays into Linux. I did a little bit of web design, mostly to help friends over the years. And there’s always been a list of people for whom I am their unofficial tech support department.

I truly didn’t understand how much another world exists on the web, particularly in social media. As I’ve gotten me into this whole “web presence” thing I have at times felt like I’ve fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole. There’s a whole new language, Pingbacks and TrackBacks and WordPress and inbound links and outbound links and follow links and no follow links and on and on and on…

I’m learning, and having a great time, and meeting so many amazing people who I would’ve never met otherwise. Getting to know all of you through twitter and Facebook and your blogs and your comments here is really wonderful.

So I’m learning, I hope that I never stop learning, not as long as I’m alive. Even though there were times when I feel overwhelmed by it all, it’s expanding my world view, my map and my perception. And all of that is a wonderful thing.

Thank you for being a part of my online world, and joining in the conversation.

Please excuse this blatantly promotional post, but I’m really excited about this, and you get awesome stuff for free.


Self Improvement Gifts 4 is a special website which will only be available for the next 15 days. It contains over 300 free self-improvement downloads from creators all over the world, including my Journey of Relaxation (of course you can get that free for my website already:.)

Here are just a few examples of the really cool stuff you can download for free right now:

* Personal Development Tips – Paul Klein

* NLP – Love Your Physical Self – Elizabeth Benson

* Dynamic Personality – Alex Perez Pratt

* Transformational Fitness – Amy Lundberg

*Anger Management – Giovanni Farotto

* Managing Stress – Heather Step

* How to Stay Focused – Piet Venter

* Unlimited Abundance – Gary L Glasscock

* 110 Self Help Super Tips – Jack Brown

* Outrageous Health – Charly Leetham

* Secrets of the Subconscious – Alvin Huang

* Law of Attraction – Dechen Lau

* How to Reinvent Yourself at Midlife – Iyabo Asani

* Peak Performance – Frank Bauer

* Personal Transformation – Tony Dovale

* Easy Meditation – Esdee Penn

All you have to do is click this link to go to Self Improvement Gifts right now. Keep in mind that this will only be available until January 19 and then the site comes down. I am really excited about getting the chance to check out what all sorts of self-improvement experts are doing for free.

What are your favorite downloads from Self Improvement Gifts? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear about them.

I’ve decided to take on a new challenge in 2010. I am challenging myself to be creative in some way, each and every day.

I’m doing this in a way that is slightly formalized.  Recently, I found the blog of Leah Piken Kolidas  – Create Every Day. I found her through http://www.sankofasong.com/blog/ which is also cool.

For the past few years Leah has presented this challenge. It’s a very informal thing, if you want to participate, you sign-up on the Creative Every Day Challenge page on her blog, or not. She provides suggested monthly themes on which you can create, or not. She provides a variety of ways to participate with other folks who are taking the challenge, or not. I think the best thing is, that she makes it very clear that it’s up to each person to decide how they want to participate, to what extent, and how publicly.

Some people may choose to blog every day about their creativity, I am choosing not to. I will post about it from time to time, but certainly not everyday. I actually think that unless writing a blog is a primary creative outlet for you, that posting every day about this challenge doesn’t make a lot of sense. The idea of the challenge, the way Leah describes it, is to do something creative. That may be working on a painting, or piece of music, but it’s just as legitimately cooking dinner, finding a cool way to play with your cat, or anything else that involves creativity. As I think about it, I think I probably am creative every day in one way or another. I do lots of creative stuff.

My goal in participating in this challenge, is to notice my creativity more, to be more mindful, and grateful of what I create. See, I think for many of us, we’re already creative every day in many ways. One of the best ways I know to amplify creative output is to notice the creativity that I’m already engaged in. Once I’m in that headspace of creating, often ideas just flow about lots of things, some related to what I’m doing, others not. So I am choosing in 2010 to honor my creativity by paying more attention to it.

I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. They seem to have a shelf life of about 10 minutes, and thereby are not all that useful. In fact the very specific kind of goal setting that is often recommended has rarely proved useful for me. Instead, I ask myself what do I want? And who do I want to be? And how is what I’m doing right now supportive or not supportive to the first two questions?

This is something I do on an ongoing basis, and that has worked very well for me. I feel like I’m coming to a point in my development where more concrete goals, particularly around business may prove useful, but I do tend to work intuitively and haven’t felt called to do that yet.

So with that in mind, you can imagine that I was interested, but not terminally excited when I first read a blog post by Hayden Tompkins about How To Rock 2010. (Let me stop here and say that Hayden’s blog Through the Illusion is awesome and very worth reading.)

It did take me a little bit off guard when Hayden, as she often does, put her own spin on the ideas. She talked about choosing a word for the year. A word that would serve as a navigation point for the year. Her word this year is “dance,” if you want to know why you’ll have to read her post.

I casually tossed around in my mind what my word might be, if I were to come up with one, and didn’t really get anywhere. Then I read a post by Erica Douglas called 2010 Goals; 2010 #themeword; Big Announcement! (If you’re at all interested in business, particularly business online, Erica’s blog is a must read. I know this post is starting to sound like a blog pitch fest, but I really love what both of these amazing women write.)

In her post, Erica talks about starting the #themeword meme in 2007, the concept is very similar to Hayden’s. I thought this was interesting, but since I had already decided that I didn’t need such a thing, I noted that and moved on. Except that my unconscious or higher self or muse or whatever or whoever seemed to disagree. I don’t remember exactly when, but it popped into my head (and landed there with a significant amount of force) that my #themeword for 2010 is Freedom. I like this roll around in my head for a while, but the more I thought about it the more right it feels.

For me 2010 is about creating freedom

Freedom for myself; financially, from a job that I’ve mastered and I’m ready to pass on, and most importantly from my own limiting beliefs and programming.

This year is also about helping other people create freedom for themselves through my Binaural Journeys guided meditation audios. It’s interesting, I didn’t realize that that’s what I was doing when I set out to create audio programs that combined guided meditation, binaural beats, binaural drumming and music. I just knew that I had felt inspired to create programs of this sort, so I did. But, in thinking about my #themeword, Freedom, I realized that Binaural Journeys are really tools for people to use in creating their own freedom.

I am truly excited about the year to come.

So, what’s your #themeword?

In college, I was fortunate to meet and study with Prof. Carol McAmis in the Ithaca College School of Music. Carol is a professor of voice, but she’s also a teacher of something called The Feldenkrais Method, and that’s what I studied with her. Moshe Feldenkrais was an Israeli physicist, judo master and teacher. He was one of the people who created the field which is now known generally as Somatic Education — that is to say teaching the body. The Feldenkrais Method uses very sophisticated patterns of extremely small, extremely gentle movements to help you to learn at a very deep level how to use your body more efficiently.

So what does this look like?

In a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement class with Carol, we would all come in and lay down on blankets on the floor of a large rehearsal room. Carol would sit on a stool and mostly read sets of instructions for the movements that we were to make. The things that is so amazing about doing this work is that you would lay on the ground, following the instructions, often feeling like you are doing nothing of any consequence. Yet, when you would get up and very mindfully walk around at the end of the lesson, I was often shocked by how different I felt, how much lighter or taller or thinner or fatter or what ever — but very different, and always somehow easier and more elegant.

One of the aspects of this work which I found so amazing is that there’s no right way to do it. Carol would never correct us in any direct way. She might give general clarification about something, but you had to figure out for yourself if what she was saying applied to you or not, everything applied to everyone in one sense, and no one in another. This is one of the key parts of the method, allowing people to have their own experience and process of discovery. It was truly amazing how sometimes the various members of our class would interpret the instructions in such radically different ways, and yet still receive powerful benefits.

You want me to put what where???

Often the instructions would become confusing, sometimes even disorienting, Carol’s response to this was always the same “enjoy your confusion.” This turned out to be an extremely profound statement for me, and one that continues to affect how I think today. By telling us to enjoy our confusion, she was suggesting a number of things. The first is that confusion is okay, and that it was not necessary to try to only many it immediately. It also taught us to stay in the experience, to really experience, accept, and embrace the confusion. It also started a process for me of learning that I could get excited when I hit a point of confusion, because most often that was the state which came just before discovery. This is something that has stayed with me, and which I remind myself of to this day. It’s an incredibly powerful thing.

When I was putting together this blog post I found a YouTube video of Moshe Feldenkrais himself talking about the importance of letting each person have their own path of discovery.

So, the next time you find yourself feeling like you don’t know which end is up, let me encourage you to stop worrying and enjoy your confusion.

I have to say, I’m rather new to actually using twitter but I’m really getting to love it. This morning I saw a tweet from Wendi Friesen. If you don’t already know about Wendi’s work, she’s an amazing hypnotist, who has the biggest array of self hypnosis audio to help you with anything you can imagine that I have ever seen. I’ve known about her for quite a few years, and have a number of her products. One of them is a set of hypnosis sessions to help solve insomnia. This was an almost magical solution for me, when I was really having difficulty sleeping.

Photo by Son of Groucho

But in any case, this morning Wendi tweeted a special gift, particularly for people who were having a really hard time right now. It’s a video and an MP3 download that she is offering for free to help us release our fears so that we can create the things that we most need in our lives to be who we really are.

Now I know to some people, the idea of the “Law Of Attraction” another manifestation techniques seems very strange, and New Age woo woo ridiculousness. And I understand where that tendency comes from, it’s easy to dismiss something that is so far outside the past experience most of us have had. Also, it’s often discussed in the very new age, flowery language which is a turnoff for many people. But I think to ignore this set of tools is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I could talk about why I believe that everything in the universe is connected to an energetic level, and that this is being proven more and more clearly through research in physics. I could also talk about how these manifestation ideas really come directly out of ancient tradition, retold in modern forms first at the turn of the 20th century and then again in recent years. I’m not to do either of those things, maybe I will in another post someday.

It’s all in your head!

I want to talk to you about is fairly straightforward, and it’s what happens in your own mind, no woo woo needed. The Law Of Attraction teachers talk about how we get what we focus on. This isn’t a big surprise, it’s just how our brains work. Have you ever had the experience of buying a new car, and suddenly it seems like every third car you see on the highway is the same model you bought. Or maybe, you’ve bought an item of clothing, and all of a sudden it seems like everyone around you is wearing the same style. We are creatures of pattern recognition, so once we make an important decision our brains are filtering for related information — other people with the same car, or wearing the same outfit.

Likewise, when we concentrate on our fears, on our experience of being stuck, our brains provide us with all of the things around us that we can use that information and evidence for why we should be afraid, and how stuck we truly are. When we shift what we’re thinking about, even if we don’t completely believe it, we’re giving our unconscious minds new sets of things to look for — things like new possibilities. My experience has been, in my own life, but this is truly the case. When I feel stuck, I tend to get depressed and focus on how depressed I am, and then do things to try to make me feel better like watch TV. I think it’s obvious, how unlikely that is to cause a solution to occur to me — I’m just not putting myself in situations where I would be inspired.

I really believe that the most dangerous thing for us to focus on is fear, because it’s so easy to make that fear grow and become paralyzed by it. This is clearly not useful. And that brings me back to Wendi’s gift. In the video, Wendi tells her amazing story of how she used changing her focus to solve a really scary problem in her own life, and then she leads a very brief, but very powerful exercise to start that process in you. The MP3 download is a 20 minute hypnosis session to take this even further and deeper really releasing fear.

So I hope that  this makes sense. And I hope, that if you haven’t tried any of this sort of work, or even if you have, that you’ll go and take advantage of Wendi’s free gift right now.

It’s at: http://www.planetwendi.com/2009/12/my-gift-to-you/

Thank you Wendi! and Merry Christmas!

Contando Dinheiro - Image by Jeff Belmonte

I just read the new post on Joe Vitale’s blog, How Much Money is Bad?. It’s about money and people’s limiting beliefs about money. It really got me thinking.

I realized, that money is just a tool, like a screwdriver. It is no more and no less. It reminded me of Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In fact the specific version that came to mind is from Disney’s version, not the new one that was just released, but the classic version that I grew up with. Burned in my mind, is the image of Scrooge counting his money, literally surrounded by stacks of gold coins. He hoarded his money, like a squirrel storing nuts for the winter. But unlike the squirrel, Scrooge never used any of the money to do anything. It occurs to me, that this is the equivalent of filling room after room after room with every type and size and description of screwdriver, but never using any of them to drive a screw, or do anything else.

When we talk about this in terms of screwdrivers, it seems utterly absurd. On the other hand, we talk about it in terms of money, it seems like a good idea. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I think saving is a bad idea. What I am saying is that I think if we want financial abundance in our lives, we need to be focused on what we really want, not the screwdriver, but the thing that we make with it. Likewise we need to focus on what it is that we desire to do with our money. This could be anything, a new home for family, amazing works of philanthropy that make a difference in the world, helping to make someone’s dream come true or maybe just creating amazing experiences for ourselves. Whatever it is, I think the it’s incredibly important to be focused on that, rather than on many coins we have in our bank account.

I feel in my heart that doing this will make all the difference. So I’ll leave you with this thought, in the words of Tiny Tim: “God bless us, every one.”

Yesterday, in my post about Greg Mortenson’s new book Stones Into Schools I mentioned that I had a realization about social media and Internet marketing while I was reading it. In this post, I want to tell that story.

First, I need you to understand that I started out as an extreme skeptic that social media (Twitter, Facebook and so forth) had anything to offer me other than annoyance. I just didn’t understand why so many people were so excited by these Web 2.0 ideas. In general I’ve always been in favor of expert content, written by experts and edited by experts. The idea of user generated content didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Why would I want to look at content created by “average people” rather than researching and finding the best content, which I presumed was created by the best experts. Having grown up in a university town in a relatively scholarly family, then attended college and now spending most of my career working at a university, I guess this view isn’t all that surprising. But over a period of years a number of things started happening.

The first one was a couple of years ago I was involved with a high school play in which one character was a mime. The young woman who played that role (a high school freshman) was absolutely extraordinary. I asked her where she had done her training in mime, and was shocked when she told me that she had none. She had gone to YouTube and search for “mime,” and then figured out what she needed to do for her role from what she saw. Don’t get me wrong, she’s an extremely talented performer, but the idea that she could learn just from YouTube enough mime to do such an extraordinary performance just blew my mind. So I guess, that was my first introduction to the idea that user generated content could in fact be useful.

A year or so later, my friend Dave Gallant who had worked for me as a student at UNH, graduated. I stayed in touch with him, and was surprised to learn that he got his first job through Twitter, a service which had never struck me as having any value. As I continued talking with him I learned that he had really dedicated a significant amount of energy to learning about marketing in social media. In fact he now works at HubSpot, a company that helps business integrate social media into their marketing.

Then I started looking into Internet marketing, and after a substantial amount of research joined Pat O’Bryan’s Portable Empire Coaching Program. Very early in my work with Pat, I learned that he saw social media particularly Facebook and Twitter as important marketing tools. Of course I already heard this from my friend Dave, but I really didn’t get it. Don’t get me wrong, I trust Pat, and I think he really does know what he’s talking about, but it didn’t make any sense to me. I just didn’t get how people use social media to market their businesses. I’m sure you’re wondering what this has to do with Greg Mortenson’s Books, I’m getting there, bear with me, this does all come together.

Now by this time, I had finally given in and gotten a Facebook account, but I was using it in a very limited way. I saw it as a way to connect with people who I have lost track of since college who I really wanted to get in touch with, and it had worked for that purpose, but I still didn’t see how this “social media stuff” was useful for marketing. As I remember it, I think that both Dave and Pat basically encouraged me to use the tools to build relationships with people who had similar interests, and through that to build a network. At that time, I guess I wasn’t ready to understand what they were really asking me to do.

When I saw that Greg Mortenson had released a new book I bought it immediately. I started reading it last week, it wasn’t very far into it that Greg reminded us of the primary lesson he learned in the experiences that would become his first book Three Cups Of Tea. I’d like to let Greg share that story with you:

“Haji Ali spoke. ‘If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die. Doctor Greg, you must take time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated but we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time.’ That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in my life. We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly…Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them.”
–Greg Mortenson in his first book Three Cups of Tea

I remembered fondly, the first time I heard the story reading the first book. I still didn’t get how it applied to me though. Fortunately, Greg kept returning to this theme of building relationship before trying to do anything else. And then all of a sudden, maybe two thirds of the way through the book, it clicked. This idea of sharing 3 cups of tea, of building relationships before attempting to do anything else finally clicked. I got the message that I had seen, but not understood in so many other places. So I started using Twitter. Meeting people, talking with them, learning about their interests. One of the people who I’ve met along the way is @WarrenWhitlock and I’m pretty sure that he was the one who said in one of his early tweets to me, “people won’t care what you know until they know that you care.” Which I guess really sums it up.

So thanks Greg for two amazing, inspiring books; thanks Dave and Pat for putting up with my cluelessness, and thanks Warren for saying it so clearly.

How would you describe your relationship with social media? Please comment! And if you know somebody who doesn’t seem to get social media, but who you think would like it if they did, please use one of the links below to send this post to them. You might be able to save a lot of time and trouble.

I’m excited to announce a new project.  I’m creating guided meditation audio programs I’m calling Binaural Journeys.

These journeys combine Binaural Beats, Binaural Drumming, music, natural sounds and guided meditation to take you very deeply into relaxation and trance, even if you have no previous meditation experience. All you have to do is listen through headphones, and let my voice, and the sounds guide you.

Headphones are important to this, the binaural technologies require feeding specific sounds in to each ear.

I am making a series of videos about the technologies and creation of the Binaural Journeys programs.

The first video which I’m including here is an introduction to, and explanation of binaural beats, what they are and how they work

You can download my Journey of Relaxation for free by going to http://binauraljourneys.com

Pat O’Bryan just made what I think is a really insightful post on his blog. I’m not going to summarize what he said here, I’ll let you read it for yourself. (And it is worth reading.)
Pat’s post set off a train of thought that I want to talk about.

The sign of truth

Money and enlightenment:

I believe that many of us here in America have an incredibly powerful belief associating poverty (or at least relative poverty) with godliness and enlightenment. We feel that somehow the most holy person is the one who has no possessions and no desire for material wealth.
So I think it’s important to look at where this belief comes from. I could be an extremely cynical person, and suggest that this belief has been encouraged by religious and political hierarchies for  hundreds of years in order to keep “the people” from going after the wealth held by the hierarchy. But I’m not that cynical, so I’m not to say that.
I think we can certainly see elements of this belief in our culture over many years, going back at least to the Puritans here in America. And there are certainly other traditions in the world that holds similar values about spirituality and money. It’s possible that this sort of belief grew out of an honest desire to encourage people to not be greedy. To not seek wealth in ways that harm others.

But the more important question is: does this belief serve us?

I would never try to answer that question for you, only you can do that. But I’d like to provide some food for thought in talking about my own beliefs.
Beliefs are extremely powerful, there has been a tremendous amount of research demonstrating how important it is that people with serious illnesses have a sense of hope, a belief in the possibility of improvement and good quality of life. How over and over again it’s been demonstrated that people with hope, with that belief, do dramatically better than those who are pessimistic. I think that this is both spiritual and biological. (If you haven’t read it, check out Candace Pert’s book Molecules Of Emotion)
What we believe changes us, mentally, physically and spiritually. So I think that it’s incredibly valuable to look at our beliefs and see if they serve us. Much of what we believe is programming that we pick up as members of a culture.
From the time we are born we observe what’s going on around us, and are thereby indoctrinated into the worldview of our culture. This is basically a good thing, it’s how we come to understand the way the world works, so that we can survive in it as we continue to grow. But there’s a down side to this, we don’t get to choose the programming, it happens automatically, unconsciously. It’s been my experience that most of the difficulties in my life come from my unconscious beliefs. I’m operating based on a map which exists deep in my unconscious and it’s so deeply ingrained, that it feels unnatural to question it.
I think that questioning beliefs is incredibly important. Because this “map” is like a filter that we use to understand the universe, and where things fit in it, it’s easy to forget that it’s just a map. It is not objective reality. We as humans, are incapable of perceiving objective reality! Everything we look at, everything we hear or see is filtered through the map of our programming and experience.
When I look at the idea of spirituality in relationship to money, and do my best to set aside my programming, here’s what I come up with:
I believe there are people who have experienced a call to a type of spiritual practice that involves some level of material poverty. I think that is fine for those people, if that’s the call they are experiencing.
I also believe that there are people who through their spiritual practice, following their path, have come to a point where having many material possessions is not something that they want. I think that’s also fine for those people.
But most of all I believe that each of us has our own path, that we live in a universe of infinite possibility. I believe that just because something is right for someone, even a very great someone, does not mean that it’s right for anyone else. I believe that it’s up to each of us to discern our particular call.
This is not the easy way! I do believe that it’s the best way, at least it’s the right way for me. It’s up to you to decide what’s right for you.

You know, it feels very strange for me to use the term writing in relationship to this blog, or anything else I do online. There are a couple of reasons for this, one is technological, the other rather personal. I’d like to share both of them with you.

Writing

The personal reason goes back to when I was a little kid. My handwriting was always terrible, and I was commonly told that I should be a doctor. Today I like to tell people that they don’t want me to hand write things because if I do, they’ll need a hieroglyphics expert to decipher what I wrote. In any case, it turned out that the problem went beyond poor handwriting. When I was in second grade, I was diagnosed with a learning disability called dysgraphia which means literally “not write.”

A slightly expanded definition, which I really like comes from Wiktionary: “A language disorder that affects a person’s mechanical ability to write.” I don’t think the explanation goes far enough though. Definitions like that, while useful are not very helpful in explaining the experience of having this type of “disorder.” See, I never knew any other way, I can’t feel what it’s like for someone else to write. I only know my own experience. This is a distinction which I certainly didn’t understand as a second grader.

Of course, that is not to say that my parents, some amazing teachers and a few experts didn’t go out of their way to try and explain. I was an intelligent and inquisitive child who wanted to know how everything worked. I think my own experience always got in my way, because whatever I was told was filtered through my own experience. This is just part of how we humans process information, but it wasn’t something I understood then.

What I knew at that time was that I hated to write, and I didn’t want to do it. That was my truth, my experience. I knew I had this “dysgraphia thing” but it wasn’t that important in my day-to-day thought. What I did think about was that I didn’t want to write, and often, I would make arrangements with my teachers to do incredibly elaborate projects or presentations rather than relatively simple writing assignments. But of course, this was fine by me — I love to talk, I love to put on shows and to make things — that never seemed like work.

It was around the same time as I was diagnosed, that we got our first computer at home. An Apple IIc, state-of-the-art at the time. I took to the computer like the proverbial fish to water, amazing my parents as I sat at the computer for hours transfixed by learning BASIC programming. I also learned, though I don’t think it was consciously, that typing was a whole lot easier for me than writing. It makes sense, the physical act of typing a character is much simpler than the act of writing the same character. My mother insisted that I learned to touch type at a young age. I hated doing it, but it has served me extremely well. However, typing was still only a partial solution.  Looking back on it I think it was still much more difficult for me to produce a typed document than for most of my peers to produce a document which was either typed or handwritten.

It wasn’t really until I was in high school, that I looked inside to think about and talk about the experience of my disability. Doing that was not my idea, it was at the request of my high school special ed teacher Denise Williams. Denise though that it was important that each student’s IEP (Individualized Educational Plan) have a statement from the student about how they viewed their needs, and what kind of help would be the most useful.

I dreaded having to write (type) this statement, as I did all writing assignments. I still remember vividly, sitting at the Mac SE in the resource room wondering what I was going to say. Then something happened, I’m not sure how, but it started to flow as I thought about it. I had clarity about what I wanted to say, and I started to type, I don’t have the document anymore (or if I do I certainly don’t know where,) but I remember the explanation that came to me so clearly. I still think it’s the best way I’ve ever come up with to describe this.

What I wrote, went something like this: when I need to write (or type), it takes an extraordinary amount of energy. I don’t know how to explain how much energy, since I don’t have any way to measure it. The only way I can describe it is like this: imagine that getting ideas from your brain to your hand to be written was like pushing them through a pipe. For most people, the pipe is the whole size of their arm, for me it feels more like a soda straw. Every time I write, I’m trying to jam these ideas, which are way too big, through this little tiny pipe to get them to come out my hand.

So I guess it’s not surprising, that I really grew to hate writing. I would work very hard to avoid it. I eventually realized that when I was doing an assignment in written form (either handwritten or typed) I would unconsciously censor myself, reducing my answers to the absolute minimum my unconscious thought I could get away with. Of course, what my unconscious thought was enough rarely pleased my teachers. The thing that’s important to understand here, is that I didn’t even realize that I was doing it. I only realized it when I looked at the difference between what happened when I spoke and what happened when I typed.

Fast forward many years. I guess it’s not a surprise that although the idea had been somewhat attractive, and I felt I had things to say, I had never had a blog. rather, I should say, I had never had a successful blog. I did start one years ago on LiveJournal, and then again on some other blogging service, I never posted anything on either of them.

So then, what am I doing writing this extremely long blog post about why I always hated writing?

That’s what brings me to the second reason that I feel funny calling this writing. My hands have barely touched the keyboard or mouse in the creation of this post. For the last few months, I’ve been using software called MacSpeech Dictate. It takes what I say, and translates it into written text. I’ve tried dictation software before, and though in one sense I had been impressed that it worked at all, it never worked well enough for me to use it for anything.

This time, it’s different. This software works incredibly well. That’s not to say that it’s accuracy is perfect, or that there haven’t been a few times that I wanted to throw the computer out the window. Overall though, it’s amazing. It really works! Until I started writing this post, I hadn’t really realized how freeing this software has been for me.

So it’s still kind of strange for me to think of “writing,” or rather dictating, producing written documents — as something I could enjoy, but I really am enjoying being able to share things with all of you.

I look forward to your comments and questions, and please, if you’re an educator who feels that this would be useful to share with a colleague or student, please do.  And if you feel that other people would enjoy reading this, please use the links below to post it to Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Stumbl or other social media of your choice.

What's your map

I believe, that the key to finding happiness is realizing that you haven’t lost it. Happiness is a choice, a choice that each of us makes every moment of every day.

Now I can hear some of you talking to your computer screens right now saying  ”where the heck did this idea come from, and why is Andy talking about it.”

I know that many of you have found this blog through hearing me speak about storytelling, technology, teaching and the intersection of those things. The thing is, I believe that the ultimate story that we tell is one that we tell every moment of every day by choosing where to put our attention, and how to live our lives. When things become really interesting, is one we live at the intersection of multiple areas that don’t normally meet. This is where I live, so expect to find interesting connections, some may surprise you, some even shock you, but hopefully all of them make you think.

This morning, I read a post that Craig Perrine made on his blog titled “What would you BELIEVE for a Million Dollars?” Which really got me thinking, so much so I wrote a rather lengthy comment on his blog (which as of this writing is waiting for moderation to determine that I’m human and not a spammer.) But in any case the thought stuck with me and so I thought I would write about it here.   Craig said, “You just have to believe you can be happy now. ”

I think there’s something more to it.

In this case I don’t think it’s just a matter of believing that you can be happy, (although I think that that’s necessary.)  In my experience, you have to *decide* to be happy.   I’m fortunate to have several friends who have made this decision. They have decided to be happy in whatever situation they happen to be in. They have decided that it’s not worth the energy to be negative, and it makes them amazing people to be around.

This ties into the other thing that Craig’s post got me thinking about. It’s so easy for us to forget that our perception of the world is not, in fact, the world. It is just our perception. We are only capable of perceiving, and processing a tiny fraction of the information in the world around us in every moment. We take that information, filter it through expectation and pattern recognition, and act like that’s reality. It isn’t, not even close.

It’s like spending so much time staring at a map that we forget that the map is not the territory. It’s just a map, a collection of data about the territory filtered and organized in a hopefully useful way, but that’s not a guarantee of accuracy or even usefulness.

I have been reminded of this recently, how much it’s worth consistently pouring into my brain things which keep my map tuned up the way I want it to be.   I’ve been spending a lot of time lately listening to books (from audible.com) by people like Joe Vitale and Craig Perrine. Keeping a constant stream of this sort of material flowing into my mind has really moved me into a place where I’m seeing possibility everywhere. It’s a great place to be!

Even the experience of writing this blog has changed my map, my beliefs about myself, in a really significant way. But you’ll have to wait for tomorrow to hear that story. I think it may be the most important blog post that I’ve written so far, so come and check back.